Scarpetta Recap ‘Hello From Space, my Dear’: Secret Stairs

Scarpetta Season 1 Episode 5

At my recap of the fourth episode, I wrote that part of what was preventing Scarpetta from soaring as a show was that it was trying to do too much. I was already thinking of two promising separate shows whilst I was watching it, a period mystery series featuring young Kay and a more tech-focused miniseries with Lucy. So, of course the fifth episode started with a murder mystery in space.

In many ways, the choice to pack this many storylines into one eight-episode season is indicative of the low attention span society we now live in. People get bored so easily, so new information, new entertainment, has to be produced to keep their attention. That works in social media companies. But, this is TV. This is storytelling. It’s okay to allow stories to breathe. It’s okay to immerse your viewers into a world – one world – and keep them there.    

The saving grace of this third separate show within a show is that it is a genuinely interesting mystery, and it moved the relationship between husband and wife Kay Scarpetta and Benton Wesley into a more dramatic front. For the first four episodes, the drama was mostly on Kay’s side of the family. Benton was the patient husband, the supportive spouse who moved because his wife wanted to move, who put up with having people he did not particularly like live in his ancestral home. That Benton worked a separate angle on the Gwen Hainey murder investigation placed him on the sidelines as Kay and Marino dealt with the possibility that they got the wrong man all those years ago (and, something else, a secret that the two of them thought they had long buried and which now threatened to blow up on their faces). Now, the FBI needed Kay’s forensic expertise, and Benton had to face the fury of a wife who felt he betrayed her.

Thor Labs, a cutting edge company with contracts with the Department of Defense, launched an experimental biomedical lab to 3D bioprint human organs in orbit. Kay explained that conditions in space optimised growth. This was three months ago. The orbiter had nine modules and a crew of three – two commercial astronauts, American Richard Vance and Russian Ivan Szewski, and a biomedical engineer to perform the experiments, Jared Horton.

Three hours after ground control lost contact with the orbiter, an unknown object re-entered the earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated. It turned out to be the orbiter, and there were two bodies in the wreckage. Kay figured out that the two men were killed using a special type of ammunition that would ricochet without exiting, making it the perfect ammunition to kill in space. Since Jared Horton was seen alive in Kazakhstan, the two bodies have got to be the two astronauts.

What was the connection with Gwen Hainey? Two days after Gwen died, Jared called her from space. The message he left her was innocuous, and since he was in orbit, he could not have killed her. The FBI suspected that Gwen and Jared were partners in selling sensitive trade secrets to the Russians. Jared brought the Glaser Safety Slugs specifically because he planned on murdering the astronauts he was with. He then sabotaged the orbiter and escaped. 

Even when they were with the FBI, Kay could barely contain her temper. She let loose on her husband on their car ride back home. She accused him of knowing Matt Petersen had nothing to do with Gwen’s murder and saying nothing. Since he could not break Bureau confidentiality, he could at least have hinted at something. It did not look like Benton was privy to whatever secret Kay and Marino carried regarding the Petersen case, because he seemed genuinely confused. He wondered if he had told Kay what he knew, if she would have been able to keep it to herself, or if she would have shared it with Marino.

Arguments have the unfortunate tendency of branching out where the arguers did not intend them to go. Kay asked if Benton was jealous of Pete, if he was sleeping with his partner, if he regretted leaving his wife and kids for her. She demanded that he say what he really felt, and when he did, it had nothing to do with the case they were just fighting about. Benton said he thought Dorothy was right, Kay did have a co-dependent relationship with Lucy, and has had it since Lucy was a kid. He thought Lucy would be better off away from Kay. Kay told Benton he was not sleeping in the house that night, and Benton pointed out that it was his house, he was not going anywhere. Kay then declared there was something deeply emotionally wrong with him.

In a better paced, less crowded show, Kay’s declaration of whatever was wrong with Benton would have been slowly explored through the episodes, and not simply blurted out in an argument. That it was then followed by Benton going down a secret staircase, settling in an old chair as though he had been there many times before, and staring at what looked like a torn book page showing a black and white photo of a dead woman with text about a case study felt less like an earned reveal and more an (almost, there were really subtle hints) out of the blue development. Am I curious as to what was wrong with Benton? Yes, I have been hoping for something more to be revealed about his character since he is played by Simon Baker. Do I think the show could have laid what looks to be a reveal of carefully controlled darkness better? Also yes.

Back in 1998, Kay has been trying to trace Borawash purchases and found that it was so widely used, the government employees alone who had access to them numbered at around 10 thousand. Kay, Marino, and Benton were all on edge, especially Marino, since it was a Friday night, and the killer could strike again. Whilst Kay went to watch a movie with Lucy, Marino followed the man he still suspected of being the killer, Matt Petersen. Their efforts were in vain. The killer struck again and this time, the victim was reporter Abby Turnball’s sister.

Rating: B

Strays

🔬There was a brief moment with young Kay when Marino offered to give her a lift home and Benton offered to follow her in his car that mirrored their present day conflict, at least from Benton’s point of view. 

🔬When young Lucy went to buy popcorn, she saw Benton with his wife and kids. She later told Kay, and though it looked like this was news to Kay, she covered as well as she could.

🔬There was growing closeness between Lucy and Fruge.

🔬Dorothy and Marino, too, were getting along better, after Dorothy realised that she was indeed very much in love with her (latest) husband.

🔬Marino saw Matt Petersen taken out and beaten up outside a bar that Friday night when the killer killed again.

🔬Present day Marino told Kay that they were good, Matt didn’t kill Gwen. This was after Kay came home following her own realisation that Matt indeed was innocent of this murder.

Episode Title: Hello From Space, my Dear

Episode Writer: Matthew Zucker

Episode Director: Charlotte Brandstrom and David Gordon Green

Original Release Date: March 11, 2026

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